


The Philosophy of the Hanged Man

by keeponshouting



Series: To Be Wild [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 21:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeponshouting/pseuds/keeponshouting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan visits Grantaire and receives a philosophical history lesson that perhaps tells him more about his friend than about the history at hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Philosophy of the Hanged Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarkReactor (1944)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1944/gifts).



> This is blatant friendship fic written for my darling Sarah, set in our currently half-baked modern alt 'verse, and hinting at E/R and Jehan/Courfeyrac. It was originally supposed to be fluffy and sweet but, as it turns out, R has a habit of getting his weirdness and depression all over everything. So, uh, enjoy.

When R says that he does things upside down and backwards, sometimes he means it quite literally. Jehan, being one of his fellow artists, is the first one to figure this out or, rather, the first to ever discover it.  Not that, of course, it's a thing that R would care or even think to hide. One day the poet just swirls in through the door that no one ever finds locked and there are cats winding around his ankles with spots of brightly colored paint splattered all through their fur and, no, that isn't strange, really, but it peaks his interest none the less. So he follows the trail of them, specifically the twitching tail if a dark rusted tabby that R calls Merlot, and he finds the Hanged Man in a broken door frame, painting pictures.

It seems appropriate that Jehan's first instinct is to pull out his notebook and capture the scene in flowing verbiage, how the man before him may be a cynic, a lost soul, some might grope for words and say foolish but if Les Amis were Arcana, no, Capital R would not be the Fool.

Words collected in handwriting that flows like the physical expression of the verse, Jehan spins low with the first hints of a rising whirlwind and tilts his head in, tapping his temple against the side of Grantaire's scruffy chin. "What are you painting?"

The artist is as much canvas as creator, using brushes and fingers interchangeably against the rough stretch of fabric and scrap wood frame and his own bare chest and and xylophone of countable, too prominent ribs. "I don't know." A nose and a knuckle and a smudge of dark oils. "But that's half the fun of making art happen, isn't it?  Finding out what it is."

A sweeping curve of a shadow cuts into long strokes of red and he doesn't think before he brushes wet, technicolor fingers through the dark curls that hang like jungle vines from his head.

"Your hair," Jehan informs him, "wants cutting."

R shrugs, which is an entertaining gesture when performed upside down, and clamps the end of a paintbrush between dry lips and white teeth.  One side of his face is covered in blue paint.  It's the same blue as what Jehan assumes to be eyes on the canvas in front of him and the splotch on his skin is in the shape of a hand.

"Have you--"  There's a pause as Jehan tilts his head, contorts his body, tries to get a view anywhere near what the Hanged Man is seeing without getting any paint on his own too-bright clothing or dipping his hair in the pallet on the floor.  "Have you eaten today?  I mean, we're all meeting later for dinner but I could go get something from the corner store if--  R, I think there's paint in your coffee."

The bite-marked paintbrush clatters to the floor and is pounced by a kitten.

"A legitimate concern, Monsieur Prouvaire."  Grantaire pauses his artistic contemplation to eye the color-stained mug, which has long since gone cold, and the kitten swipes at his painted hair spikes instead.  "I may have dropped a brush in that rather than the wash water at some point by accident.  That would explain how I got a tint of brown in my yellow."

Jehan giggles and removes the cup before a tail ends up in it.  "Exactly how long have you been hanging like this, darling?"

With a hum, R scratches red and blue streaks into the fur under a tiny chin, then wipes his hands on his blue jeans and carefully curls himself upward, riding a series of abdominal twinges, until his fingers wrap around the cross bar and he unhooks his knees.  "Well, I've had my easel up for over twelve hours but I've only been turned this way for about a quarter of that in pieces."

The way he moves and stretches, Jehan thinks, is a fascinating spectacle.  If it weren't so important to be sure that the artist stay fed, the poet would be tempted to pull out his pen.  As it is-- "Do you have anything other than booze in your kitchen?"

R curls his legs back over his anchor and grins.

As it turns out, and Jehan quickly discovers, there is an impressively large supply of instant meals in the cupboard.  Every last item is, of course, the sort of thing one can easily and cheaply acquire at any twenty-four hour convenience shop and to which one simply adds boiling water and they've all been stashed on a top shelf where they aren't so easily accessible to feline investigation, though there does happen to be a rather fluffy, ginger beast nesting on top of a stack of plates.  Jehan leaves the cat be and simply puts the kettle on, then washes up a bowl and a fork and breaks up a package of ramen noodles.  The water is whistling by the time he manages to wrestle the flavor packet away from one of the dozen or so other voyeurs who have gathered to see exactly what is going on.

"I'm not even certain what flavor these are supposed to be but you need to take a break from you masterpieces and eat this."

Grantaire swivels at the waist, spine twisting further than Jehan was, personally, entirely aware possible, and makes grabby hands.

Jehan raises his eyebrows but hands him the bowl.

Somehow it seems perfectly natural that Grantaire should be so adept at eating with his head still pointed toward the ground and the pseudo-meal is consumed in under a minute, remnants of noodle and broth left for a frenzy of twitching noses and lapping tongues.

"How many are you taking care of now, exactly?"  Jehan crouches down to scratch at a fuzzy ear, a proffered chin, an arching back, the base of a tail, none of which belong to the same cat twice, and he smiles.  "Do you even know?"

His attention back on his painting, which has begun to look something like a portrait but is still a beautiful mess of dripping lines and running colors, R bares his teeth and clicks his tongue against the backs of them as he thinks.  "Probably twenty or so who stay around all the time, now Olga's had her kittens."

"Oh."  Some distance away, Jehan perches himself on the edge of a sun-bathed and fur-matted window seat, cheerfully enduring the barrage of demanding fluff and nibbling baby teeth that have found his ankles and bare toes.  "Olga's the fluffy black one with the ginger patch over her eye, isn't she?"  When R sway swings back and forth in a full-body nod, the next question is, of course, "How many?"

A finger swipes staccato lines against the canvas, quickly counting in curls of thick shadow.  "Talu, Toro, and Vsk.  Three.  Talu looks like Olga except with shorter fur but Toro and Vsk are both little black fuzz balls."  Red bleeds into gold bleeds off the bottom of stretched fabric.  "Toro's left eye is blue."

Jehan hums to say that he's listening as he slides back to sit properly, pulling his feet up beneath him.  "I'm guessing the names have something to do with art or philosophy or--"

Grantaire hums right back and stretches his arms toward the floor with a quiet series of pops and cracks.  "Olga Liubatovitch, a Nihilist and student of medicine, sent to the town of Talutorovsk in Western Siberia after being tried and condemned for Socialist propagandism.  The people loved her; the government hated her.  In writing her biography, Sergei Stepniak describes her as an independent - one of 'those who, proud, daring, and fearing nothing, are always ready to risk everything for the merest trifle.'"  As he speaks, the artist pulls himself up in much the same manner as he did to stretch his legs before and almost gracefully tumbles himself to the ground, stopping short in a crouch to rummage through his box of paints.  "After suffering a rather tremendous degree of humiliation at the hands of the Ispravnik - ehm - chief of police-- Ah!"  The interrupting sound of success is, unsurprisingly, accompanied by the triumphant raising of a half-empty handle of whiskey.

In the window, Jehan sighs and rolls his eyes at the sight as he slowly curls himself up on one side, pleasantly warm and growing sleepy in the sunlight, a much larger version of his many drowsing companions who have tucked and sprawled themselves about the cushion and floor.

By his easel, R drops onto his rear and stretches his legs out in front of him as he takes one too-long swig and continues his story.  "Anyway, after being humiliated via completely unnecessary and unsanitary solitary confinement over some trumped up rubbish charges, mainly because the police chief was rather a dunce and refused to either admit his own ignorance or allow a political prisoner to get the better of him even though she was a million times more intelligent than he could've ever dreamed to be, Olga pretended to drown herself when she'd actually run off with the help of some country boy she'd converted to Socialism and she sort of tricked people into helping her from one place to another until she got to St. Petersburg, where she stayed a couple days with some relative before the lady got too creeped out by her or something.  Then Olga got lucky and ran into some barrister she'd known in the past and he got her hooked up with a place and proper papers and all that."

Shifting his paints about the floor, R leans back on one elbow and takes another burning swallow from his bottle before speaking in an obvious tone of quotation.  "'This was not the only time that she slipped like an eel through the fingers of the police. She was inexhaustible in expedients, in stratagems, and in cunning, which she always had at her command at such times; and with all this she maintained her serious and severe aspect, so that she seemed utterly incapable of lending herself to deceit or simulation. Perhaps she did not think but acted upon instinct rather than reflection, and that was why she could meet every danger with the lightning-like rapidity of a fencer who parries a thrust.'"

Jehan yawns, shifting his own position to tuck one hand under his head, his other arm dangling toward the floor, where his fingers brush some cat or another.  He's no idea which one.  Hell, he's no idea of half their names anyway.

That cat purrs and rolls so that the poet's lazy fingers can more easily reach it's favorite scratching places.

"Her peers called her one of the 'Amazons,'" R continues.  "Those were the ladies in the Nihilist community who were pretty much anti-love or whatever?  She was apparently totally fanatical about it and, like, advocated celibacy because she believed that love and sex were meaningless distractions that caused young men and women to forget all else.  It-- uh--  Shit."  Head back, R frowns at the ceiling.  "How did Stepniak say it?  'Love was a clog upon revolutionary activity.'"

Closing his eyes, Jehan giggles.  "Sounds like Enjolras."

Evidently in the process of taking another drink, R snorts and splutters.  "God, right?  If Enjolras were a lady Nihilist."  His next drink is far more successful.

There's a moment of comfortable, lazy silence then, Grantaire nursing his bottle and Jehan dozing, before the poet gives another yawn and mumbles, "So what happened next?"

"Huh?"

"With Olga.  What happened next?"

Grantaire huffs something that might be a laugh but its echo is muffled into a bottle of whiskey.  "What happens next?"  He repeats the question, takes another swallow, and answers, "Well, next she fell in love."

And Jehan jerks back awake with a startled, "Oh!"

Lying flat on his back now, staring up at where the paint has half-dried in a failed threat to drop, R accompanies his own words with loose, swelling gestures.  "There was this guy, Nicholas Morosoff.  Stepniak calls him 'a young poet and brave fellow, handsome, and fascinating as his poetic dreams' and--  Shit, you'd think Stepniak was fucking in love with this guy, too.  I mean, the description's like if, I don't know, you and Courfeyrac had some scientifically impossible love child."

It's not as if Grantaire can see him but that doesn't stop Jehan from slapping both hands over his face to hide the sudden burst of warmth in his cheeks and stifle the embarrassing little squeak that tries to escape.

R simply goes on, unawares.  "Anyway, Olga and Nicholas fell in love and were pretty much just, like, perfect together.  'Their love was like some delicate and sensitive plant, which must not be rudely touched.  It was a spontaneous and--'  Uh--"  He flails his free hand for a moment.  "'--a spontaneous and irresistible feeling.  They--' shit-- 'They did not perceive it until they were madly enamoured of each other.'  Something like that.  'All their misfortunes happened to them when they were apart.'"  A pause for another drink and he continues with a sigh.  "It all sort of turns into tragedy after that, though, you know?  She gets arrested but released and their circle of friends goes into hiding and the two of them go off and have a baby while they're laying low but Nicholas gets stir crazy and returns to Russia while she's nursing.  Of course he gets arrested."

Of course.  The words are bitter and Jehan bites his lower lip at the sound of them, peaking out between his fingers to watch the man sprawled on the floor.  One of the kittens has found its way over to curl into a ball on Grantaire's stomach.

It's quiet for a moment before the story goes on, R's voice falling lower as he recounts the end of this narrative.  "When Olga hears about Nicholas being arrested, she has to make a decision, right?  She wants to go.  Just--  Shit, what does--  'A single, irresistible, and supreme idea pervaded her — to fly to him; to save him at all costs; by money, by craft, by the dagger, by poison, even at the risk of her own life, so that she could but save him.'"  There's a pause, another drink, and Grantaire's hand finds the purring fluff just under his ribcage.  "Fucking idiot love, right?"

Jehan isn't sure if it's a rhetorical question, words vaguely directed toward himself or the rumbling kitten, but he stays quiet anyway, his fingers bunching against his palms, two fists side by side with knuckles pressed against his pursed lips.

"'On the one side was maternal feeling; on the other--'"  The bottle is left to rest by Grantaire's hip as both paint-stained hands find their way up, over his face, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. "'--on the other her ideal, her convictions, her devotion to the cause which she steadfastly served.'"

"So--" Jehan whispers, eyes wide.  "So she went."

"'She did not hesitate for a moment.  She must go.'"

"Oh."

And there is silence.

It stays quiet for some time before Jehan finally moves.  The sun has begun to disappear behind the crumbling tenements that Grantaire keeps as neighbors and the cats have, by this point, all mostly dispersed.  So he slides to the ground and shuffles across the floor on his hands and knees until he comes up beside the fallen statue of an artist, shale somehow mistaken for granite and slowly shattering.  There is no hesitation in pulling one hand away from Grantaire's face and nuzzling into the crook and curve of his friend's shoulder, one arm draped across the man's chest, other arm tucked in between them.

R just stays still for a moment, not tense but tired, before wrapping his own arm around Jehan's shoulders and sighing into a tangle of fair hair.  "'Such is the story,'" he mutters, "'the true story, of Olga Liubatovitch. Of Olga Liubatovitch do I say? No — of hundreds and hundreds of others. I should not have related it had it not been so.'"

Jehan can't help himself, then.  All he can do is quietly giggle before, finally, finding the voice to mumble in turn, "Such is the story of your cat, monsieur?"

It takes a moment but Grantaire finally grins and he snickers as he gropes for a grip on the neck of his bottle.  "So is the story of just one of my cats."  He takes a swig and makes a contented sound.  "There are plenty more where that came from."

**Author's Note:**

> All quotations taken from "A Female Nihilist: The true story of the nihilist Olga Liubatovitch" by Sergei Stepniak.


End file.
